Heat-transfer printing including sublimation printing has provided a significant advance to the art of decorating objects such as mugs and tiles with desired pictures, verbiage, and other memorable images. The process allows the user to employ the usual computer programs to create the desired material that will appear on the printed article. With such programs, the printed material may range from simple verbiage to very complex drawings or photographs. The latter can include people's likenesses, scenery, or anything else that appears in photographs or drawings. To provide the correct left-right orientation on the final item when desired, the image can undergo a mirror-image reversal prior to printing to create a mirror image of the desired view. The transfer onto the article corrects the reversal.
The actual inks and toners used in sublimation or other heat-transfer processes have received substantial investigation and reporting in recent times. The current technology permits the use of ink or toner in various computer ink-jet and laser printers. This in turn allows the employment of the usual computers and programs as set forth above. Using ink or toner that will actually evaporate off suitable paper, the user then places the image on a piece of that paper. A discussion of one line of sublimation ink finding current use appears in the United States patents of N. Hale, M. Xu, and B. Wagner including, specifically U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,488,907, 5,555,813, 5,590,600, 5,601,023, 5,640,180, 5,642,141, 5,734,396, 5,746,816, 5,830,623, 6,425,331, 6,439,710, 6,488,370, 6,618,066, and 6,686,314. Others may suffice as well.
The image-containing sheet is then placed against the article that will be decorated. This article typically has one of several commercially available, polymer-based coating to accept the subliming ink. The article with the sheet undergoes heating, often to temperatures of about 450 degrees F. Under the action of this heat, the inks or toners transfer from the sheet to the article.
Holding the sheet with the image in intimate contact with the mug or other article has always proven difficult if not worse. Typically, a “wrap” of some material, such as an elastomer, or rubber, encircles the article that will receive the image. The wrap holds the image-containing sheet between it and the article.
However, a wrap of this type poses several problems. The first difficulty concerns attaching tightly the ends of the wrap around the article. Typically, the wrap has metal ends and uses screws and nuts to attach them together at the article's center between its top and bottom edges. This activity often makes use of an electric screwdriver or drill to facilely accomplish it. When employing more than one screw, two or more fasteners must receive correct adjustments in order to assure a uniform fit and pressure against the image sheet and the article. The elastic wrap may also not assure a tight fit of the transfer sheet against the article. Lastly, a wrap of this sort has severe difficulty adjusting to articles with curving or nonparallel sides, often resulting in incomplete image transfer especially at the top and bottom edges. Holding the wrap onto sloping or conical articles often proves difficult if not impossible.
R. K. Laudy, in his U.S. Pat. No. 5,318,942, shows an elastic wrap for what he calls, “sublistatic” printing. His wrap utilizes rigid metal ends on the elastic band. He then uses what appears to be an ordinary, large paper clamp, to hold the two metal ends together. Unfortunately, the effectiveness of the wrap depends upon the holding power of the clamp keeping the two ends together. Further, the clamp has to fit correctly over the particular mug's handle or else the web cannot find use. Curved or sloping sides of the mug would also appear to present very difficult, if not insurmountable, problems for this wrap. Accordingly, the search and need continues for a web easily used in a wide variety of circumstances.